Inside The Pac-10: Bennett about to leave his heart in Pullman

By DAN RALEY, P-I REPORTER

Published
10:00 pm PST, Tuesday, February 21, 2006

His players swear by him. Fellow Pac-10 basketball coaches have great respect for him. Reporters are so enthralled with him they usually keep this candid, interesting man on the weekly coaches' conference call as long as time permits.

On Tuesday, Dick Bennett again had everyone listening to his every word, but it wasn't exactly what people wanted to hear -- he intimated fairly strongly that his long-winding coaching career probably has come down to a handful of games at Washington State.

Following a miserable 67-37 defeat Saturday afternoon at Oregon, Bennett raised eyebrows when he exited a McArthur Court interview room by suggesting that "the game was for a young man." Others insisted that flip comment was no big deal, that he says stuff like that all the time after a loss.

Yet after a few days of letting the residue of an ugly outcome diminish, the 63-year-old Cougars coach did everything but officially retire during his 15-minute, phone-in media session.

"I've never meant it to be a big secret that I'm leaning that way," Bennett said. "I think everyone is aware of that. They want me to wait until the end of the season to give it a chance to make a good decision.

"Our play this year has pretty much confirmed that it's possibly time for a change."

In his third season at WSU, his team is 11-12 overall and in eighth place with a 4-10 Pac-10 record. There have been highlights, namely a sweep of the two-game series against the 20th-ranked Washington Huskies and nonleague victories over Utah and Kansas State.

Yet a stretch of nine losses for the Cougars over their past 11 games appears to have worn down Bennett. Two games before its miserly 37-point output against Oregon, WSU was limited to 30 at home against UCLA. There was no mystery to the ineptitude.

"Oregon just dominated our guards," Bennett said. "We couldn't get past them, couldn't get into them, couldn't shoot over them. Our guys on the baseline had to create for themselves. The same thing happened against UCLA."

He even minimized the good things his current team has done, such as the victories over the Huskies, done without the Cougars' best player, then-injured point guard Derrick Low.

"The Washington games, quite frankly, I'm not sure what happened," he said. "We played well and they did not play well. They might have been feeling the pressure, (saying) 'If we don't beat these guys, something's wrong.' We didn't feel any pressure."

Bennett, who already has negotiated a commitment from WSU to select his son, Tony, as the next coach at an undetermined time, made similar conference call statements about retirement a year ago, and then backed off.

The accomplished coach, who took Wisconsin to the 2000 Final Four, sounds serious about leaving this time. If so, he's down to five games minimum. He has a parting wish, if that's what it is.

"I want to get back to playing good basketball," Bennett said.

"I said to the team, 'I have seen good basketball. Believe it or not, I've coached good basketball.' I've been so disappointed that I've seen it so rarely from my own team. That has been my great disappointment.

"If it is the end for me, I would love to see my team go out playing well."

BUNCHED UP: Bennett's team is one of the few that doesn't have a chance to claim the regular-season Pac-10 title. With two weeks of games left, six teams mathematically have a shot, with four retaining realistic hopes.

One likely too far back to make a move is Arizona (16-10 overall, 9-6 league), the preseason favorite, now two full games behind co-leaders UCLA and Cal.

"I said at the start of the year, from top to bottom, this is going to be the most competitive the league has been," Wildcats coach Lute Olson said.

"I think that's been proven with USC knocking off UCLA without one of its best players (the injured Gabe Pruitt).

"I made the statement the league wouldn't be determined until the last weekend, and that's still the case. It seems like anything can happen."

It's already clear the conference champion will have at least four losses for the first time since the 1990-91 season, and for just the fourth time in 27 seasons there has been a 10-team alignment.

STARTING TIME: All the attention given Jamaal Williams' role change with the Huskies, from starting forward to one of the first off the bench, will be made moot this weekend.

The twins, teammates of UW-bound recruit Quincy Pondexter, are the younger brothers of Alex Lopez, who lettered for the Huskies in 1995 before transferring to UC Santa Barbara.

FIVE-SECOND CALLS: Stanford's Chris Hernandez had his consecutive free-throw streak end at 34 Sunday against Arizona; 15 through 17 came with :00.8 left to force overtime against Washington last month and lead to an unlikely 76-67 victory. ... Injured Cardinal forward Fred Washington, earlier in the season discussing the merits of a Stanford education to the school newspaper, "I get to turn to those players at Arizona or Washington and be like, 'You're going to be working for me.'" ... The Oregon public-address announcer drew snickers with this halftime announcement during Saturday's 67-37 victory over maddeningly offensive inept WSU: "Leading scorer for the Cougars, Robbie Cowgill, three points." ... The Ducks remain the only Pac-10 team Bennett has not beaten. ... Oregon centerIvan Johnson, held out of Saturday's game against WSU for behavioral issues in his previous outing against the UW, will return to the rotation for games in Los Angeles. ... Dentmon, with 99 assists, is four shy of breaking the UW freshman record, held by Eldridge Recasner.